You can't make this shit up...we all know USAID is a CIA front (US govt enacts sanctions starving the Venezuelan people then they demand the CIA be allowed in the country to help the starvation they are causing (USAID delivering weapons to terrorists is what this is all about)

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Pompeo demands that Venezuela let in US aid

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday demanded that Venezuela's military let in US-backed humanitarian aid, which President Nicolas Maduro has alleged is a cover for invasion.

"The Venezuelan people desperately need humanitarian aid. The US and other countries are trying to help, but Venezuela's military under Maduro's orders is blocking aid with trucks and shipping tankers," Pompeo tweeted.

"The Maduro regime must LET THE AID REACH THE STARVING PEOPLE," Pompeo wrote, using capital letters for emphasis.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognized as interim president by the United States and major Latin American and European countries -- has been seeking to bring in assistance coordinated by Washington with Brazil and Colombia.

Mark Green, the director of the US Agency for International Development, said that truckloads of aid were waiting in Colombia as the United States "prepositions relief items intended for the people of Venezuela."

Falcon and Maduro squared off in the May 20 elections (Jamez42 and Hugoshi)

A Reutersnews article on 1 February said that the US, Canada and several Latin American governments claim Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro “stole his second-term election” in May 2018. They have therefore recognized an opposition legislator – Juan Guaidó – as Venezuela’s interim president.

Wait a second. Do they say Maduro “stole” the election from Guaidó?

That wouldn’t make sense. Because Guaidó didn’t even run in the 2018 presidential election.

Henri Falcón was the opposition politician who finished a very distant second in that election, over four million votes (47%) behind Maduro. Nobody has shown or even attempted to show that any votes, never mind millions of votes, were stolen from Falcón. In Venezuela’s electoral system, a very small amount of ballot stuffing is detectable in any contested election.

That’s why, in 2012, Jimmy Carter said the electoral system was the best in the world.

That soundness of the electoral system helps to explain the vitriol Falcón received from other Maduro opponents over his decision to run in the election. US officials threatened Falcón with sanctions if he ran. During the campaign, one of Falcón’s top advisors became exasperated enough to publicly ask the opposition party Voluntad Popular (Guaidó’s party) to “stop spreading lies” that a secret pact existed between Maduro and Falcón.

Falcón is a very well known politician who actually ran

Of course, ballot stuffing aside, an election can be grossly unfair in other ways. Much was made about two prominent opposition candidates who were disqualified from running: Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles.

So was Falcón an obscure politician (like Guaidó was before Trump anointed him as Venezuela’s president) who was allowed to run only because he would be easy to beat? Not according to Venezuelan pollster Datanálisis. That’s the opposition-aligned pollster the international media has cited the most for nearly two decades. A few months before the election, Datanálisis claimed Falcón, a former two-term governor of the Lara state (2008-2017), was basically in a statistical tie with López for top stop in popularity among opposition leaders.

It’s worth recalling that, in Brazil, the election of fascistJair Bolsonaro was recognized by the governments that now refuse to recognize Maduro, even though former Brazilian president Lula da Silva (who would have had a superb chance to win) was disqualified and imprisonedbased on extremely dubious corruption allegations. Moreover, unlike Capriles and López, da Silva was not involved with several US-backed efforts to violently overthrow the government.

Falcón’s problem was on his own side

Was Falcón denied access to media coverage during the election? No. He and his economic advisor, Francisco Rodríguez, travelled all over the country and appeared on Venezuela’s top private TV networks, where they lashed out at Maduro. In fact, Falcón launched his campaign with a 35-minute speech on Venezuelan state TV, in which he skewered Maduro as the “hunger candidate” who had turned the people into impoverished “slaves”.

After Falcón lost, he then insisted on a new vote – despite having passionately urged people to vote because he had obtained electoral guarantees. The election was moved back by a month as demanded. His allegation was that the government had bribed voters at puntos rojos (tents set up near electoral centers which are used for exit polling). But there are a few gaping holes in that story.

First, votes are secret in Venezuela, so offers of a chance at a prize or other inducements at these puntos rojos can, at best, increase turnout, but not the government’s share of the vote. Second, there were four different groups of observers who monitored the election, and they concluded it was clean. Their reports are here, here, here and here. Third, economic sanctions and threats by the US government were a massive attempt to sway the electorate – to send the message that voting for Maduro will bring intensified economic sanctions (which, in addition to being illegal, were already killing people).

Also, US interference in Venezuela’s election certainly makes a joke of alleged Russian collusionwith Trump in the 2016 presidential election that has received so much frenzied media attention.

A laughable “constitutional” argument

So why wasn’t Falcón ‘recognized’ by Trump? What’s the argument for Trump anointing Guaidó? The US recognizes the 2015 national assembly election won by the opposition – as it would definitely have recognized the 2018 presidential election had Falcón won. And part of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution says that if the president “abandons” his post, the president of the national assembly takes over until new elections are held. Guaidó was very recently named the national assembly president.

Clearly, Maduro did not ‘abandon’ the presidency by soundly beating Henri Falcón in a clean election that was marred, if anything, by murderous US interference. It’s also clear that Trump (and his Iraq-style ‘coalition of the willing’ to oust Maduro) is not Venezuela’s Supreme Court.

Crisis In Venezuela: Insane US Secretary Of State, Mike Pompeo, Is Now Claiming That Hezbollah Is Operating In Venezuela (Yes, The Man Said It And Is Indeed A Moron!)

I had wanted to take today off and not write any articles at this blog..... But someone sent me an email earlier this evening with the tag "Hey, NTS, you have to see this one!"... And after reading the context of the link that he sent, I knew that when I got back on my computer this evening, I had to write an article about it for the fact that it is so ridiculous and one for the ages....

With the US and Canada's vain attempts to overthrow the legitimate Nicolas Maduro government in Venezuela failing miserably, I have been waiting for the US to come up with some absolutely insane excuse to go ahead and invade Venezuela, and what I do want to present readers here is indeed one of the most stupidest and idiotic excuses ever!

Right now, I do want to present the following link to an article from the Splinter website, at www.splinter.com, where apparently the lunatic US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, came out yesterday in an interview on Fox Business News claiming that Hezbollah (Yes, that Hezbollah) is operating "cells" in Venezuela! First, here is the link to that report here for all to see for themselves:

OK, I have been looking for a decent video of that Fox Business interview, and I found this one via Youtube for all to witness for themselves here:

NTS Notes: OK, I will say it... This man is completely INSANE...Either that, or he is one of the biggest morons on the planet for trying to sell this garbage to the American public as his "excuse" for having Venezuela invaded!

Honestly, can anyone actually believe this shit???? Hezbollah of all things operating in Venezuela? Why didn't Pompeo try something more believable such as.. .Maybe they found Adolf Hitler living in Venezuela? (Yeah, right!).... Or maybe Osama bin Laden living in Venezuela? (No wait, they dumped him in the Indian Ocean, right, right??? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink....) ... OR they could have at least tried to say that Nicolas Maduro was 'gassing his own people' (No wait, they have reserved that one for their lame excuse to remove Bashar al Assad in Syria!)..... OR, they could have at least tried to plant one of their "ISIS" cells in Venezuela and try to scare the American people with the usual "the terrorists are out to get you" ploy! (Worked so many times before on the gullible American people, so why not??)...

There must have been at least some plausible excuses that they could have used, but instead they throw "Hezbollah" at the gullible American people, hoping that it would stick in their minds, thinking that the American people are morons???

This is so ridiculous that I really do think this man is absolutely a complete idiot and unfit to be the Secretary of State....

I do hope that the American people do see this for themselves and get others to view this important video... The American people do desperately need to wake the hell up and see that their own criminal government is indeed trying desperately now to have Venezuela destroyed...

The bottom line is this... I have viewed this Mike Pompeo as nothing more than a moron, and now I know it to be true..

From the very beginning of the political crisis in Venezuela, the United States made it clear it was supporting the head of the opposition-led National Assembly, Juan Guaido, who declared himself the Latin American country's interim president. Since then, Washington has been pressuring Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's incumbent president, to resign.

US Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams has suggested that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro should leave the country, and such "friends" as Cuba or Russia would gladly accept him.

"I think it is better for the transition to democracy in Venezuela that he be outside the country. And there are a number of countries that I think would be willing to accept him. He's got friends in places like Cuba and Russia. And there are some other countries, actually, that have come to us privately and said they'd be willing to take members of the current illegitimate regime if it would help the transition", he said, refusing to name those countries.

Abrams reiterated the Trump administration's viewpoint, insisting that Maduro should step aside in favour of self-proclaimed interim president and opposition leader Juan Guaido:

"The end game for him should be to leave power, and the sooner the better. Because his own situation is only going to decline the longer he clings to power and the more misery there is in Venezuela".

Slightly over a week ago, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton took to Twitter to express hope that Maduro and his senior aides would retire and live on a "nice beach somewhere far from Venezuela":

As Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro continues to cling to power even as more countries recognize the legitimacy of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who will soon benefit from a fund of Venezuelan oil revenue being set up by the US, a US Navy Admiral has offered the first hint that the US might be moving toward boots-on-the-ground military intervention in Latin America's floundering socialist paradise.

[RTRS] - U.S. MILITARY PREPARED TO PROTECT U.S. PERSONNEL AND DIPLOMATIC FACILITIES IN VENEZUELA IF NECESSARY: U.S. ADMIRAL

According to Reuters, the admiral said the US military is prepared to protect US personnel and diplomatic facilities in Venezuela "if necessary."

"We are prepared to protect US personnel and diplomatic facilities if necessary," Navy Admiral Craig Faller, the head of US Southern Command, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

This even after Maduro backed down from threats to forcefully expel all US personnel in the days after Guaido dramatically declared himself the legitimate acting president of Venezuela late last month and called for new elections to be held.

US embassy building in Caracas

We've been warning all along that despite assurances from Guaido that the situation in Venezuela wouldn't devolve into an all-out civil war, that some kind of conflict still appeared imminent.

And President Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton have maintained that the door remained open to a possible US military intervention.

The desperate efforts of the USraelis to effect a regime change in Venezuela have gone from shocking, to ludicrous to sad and now to pathetic. According to this Reuters report, Bolton has Tweeted a bribe offer to the Venezuelan military officers. In return for them jumping ship and going over to usurper CIA asset Guaido, the US will "drop sanctions" on them. Please read the following report and I will have more comments to follow:

"The U.S. will consider sanctions off-ramps for any Venezuelan senior military officer that stands for democracy and recognizes the constitutional government of President Juan Guaido. If not, the international financial circle will be closed off completely," Bolton said in a tweet.

Have you ever read anything so disgustingly hypocritical and so cravenly corrupt in all your life? The US has spent the last year+ in pseudo national anguish over alleged "foreign influence" in the US government...with Russia being the "enemy du jour". NOW, the US itself not only unilaterally DISMISSES the results of the recently held elections in Venezuela...but it openly and brazenly attempts to bribe military officers away from their posts defending that nation from a threatened American attack.

Still, thugs like Pompeo and Bolton cover themselves with the tiny fig leaves of morality and "democracy" in their "Tweets" and semi-rational pleadings to the prostitute media "journalists" who all go down on them in unison to perform services. Not one major media outlet in the West has stood up for the rule of the fundamental principles of democracy and international law. THEY ARE ALL PROSTITUTES! Even the pretense of balance and objectivity have been abandoned...so desperate is the neocon as their capitalist empire collapses all around them...

The EU as a body voted for a total war type situation in order to force a Trump Administration Jew-Globalist coup in Venezuela, which appears to be aimed at starting a proxy war with Russia in South America.

Italy is currently the only Western country I’m aware of that has come out and denounced this insane plot.

Italy “does not recognise” Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as its interim president, the European country’s deputy foreign minister said, warning that a Libya-style regime change must be avoided.

“Today, the greatest interest we have is to avoid a new war in Venezuela,” Manlio Di Stefano told Italy’s TV2000 network on Thursday. He added that the kind of regime change that failed in Libya must not be attempted, as it turned out to be a “mistake” that everyone recognized today.

“We must prevent this from happening in Venezuela,” he warned.

The Five Star Movement (M5S) politician’s comments come the same day the EU Parliament voted, in a non-legislative resolution, to recognize Guaido as interim president of the oil-rich South American nation.

In addition to MEPs giving their “full support” for Venezuela’s opposition-controlled parliament, the National Assembly, the bloc is also calling for fresh elections in the country in a bid to “restore democracy.”

The EU’s call for fresh elections had initially been supported by Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, an independent, on Wednesday, but he stopped short of offering any ultimatum to Venezuela’s constitutionally-elected President Nicolas Maduro.

However, Di Stefano spoke out against the support given by third-party nations to Guaido, saying Italy was totally against attempts to interfere with the “internal policies of another country.”

“It is called the principle of non-interference and is recognized by the United Nations,” he said.

As Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro continues to cling to power even as more countries recognize the legitimacy of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who will soon benefit from a fund of Venezuelan oil revenue being set up by the US, a US Navy Admiral has offered the first hint that the US might be moving toward boots-on-the-ground military intervention in Latin America's floundering socialist paradise.

[RTRS] - U.S. MILITARY PREPARED TO PROTECT U.S. PERSONNEL AND DIPLOMATIC FACILITIES IN VENEZUELA IF NECESSARY: U.S. ADMIRAL

According to Reuters, the admiral said the US military is prepared to protect US personnel and diplomatic facilities in Venezuela "if necessary."

"We are prepared to protect US personnel and diplomatic facilities if necessary," Navy Admiral Craig Faller, the head of US Southern Command, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

This even after Maduro backed down from threats to forcefully expel all US personnel in the days after Guaido dramatically declared himself the legitimate acting president of Venezuela late last month and called for new elections to be held.

US embassy building in Caracas

We've been warning all along that despite assurances from Guaido that the situation in Venezuela wouldn't devolve into an all-out civil war, that some kind of conflict still appeared imminent.

And President Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton have maintained that the door remained open to a possible US military intervention.

There shouldn't BE any US personnel in Venezuela or any of those criminal NGOs,throw any American out and lock the place down,as for that rat Abram he is a psychopath,his sort enjoy hurting people and killing,they can't be reasoned with they have to be put down like rabid dogs.

Fucking Jew demons trying to Libya Venezuela....If the Russians don't stop this shit they can go to hell

The Jew plague on our planet is getting way too rancid now

There is only so much Rusia can do because of the location of Venezuela,but they should send a couple of warships down there and why can't they organize items on ships that the US have sanctioned,that would be a start,there have been reports of some Spetznas guys down there integrated with the Venezuelan forces,if there is military intervention they should give those bastards a war they won't forget,send them home in boxes for years if they have to.

Darrall Cozens looks at the BBC's efforts at preparing public opinion for imperialist intervention.

Coup d’états are not accidental; they don’t just fall from the sky. They are the product of specific material conditions. To be successful they need preparation, planning, propaganda, time and money. Propaganda is important for the public, both domestic and international, to be “convinced” that a coup - the forcible removal of an elected government - is the logical and necessary outcome of specific circumstances.

The mass media under capitalism is part of the state machine and uses its influence and “prestige” of being “objective” and “independent” to play an important role in the propaganda element. In the UK, the BBC has perfected its skills in preparing the population to accept that any coup that imperialism supports is justified. And this they have done about Venezuela.

The BBC programme Revolution in Ruins: The Hugo Chavez Story, broadcast on 16 January, sought to prepare viewers to accept and support any moves against Maduro, as the inheritor of Chavez’s legacy. And within a week, an attempted coup had begun!

Half-truths

In doing so, however, the BBC had to tell some half-truths. They also tried to present the problems facing Venezuela as the outcome of the dictatorial characters of Chavez and Maduro. No attempt was made to explain the economic, social, and political context of the Bolivarian Revolution. And of course no mention was made of the regime of sanctions imposed by the USA.

Right from the outset the programme claimed that Chavez’s 14-year presidency was a “precursor to many of today’s populist leaders”. Under Chavez, the documentary claimed, it was a story of “incredible short-term achievements in health and education” but also a “ruthless pursuit of power”. This set the scene for the rest of the programme.

Despite having the largest oil reserves in the world, the country has collapsed. There is chaos, poverty and violence. It is the most dangerous country in the world. Chavez had been obsessed by the “pursuit of power”. The population had been “seduced and controlled by one person”. The worst side of Chavez’s personality had come to the fore.

This was the narrative peddled by the so-called ‘objective’ BBC. We are asked to believe that all of Venezuela’s problems have been caused by the dictator Chavez! It shows the depths to which the BBC has sunk.

Chavez’s critics

To support its view it had eight interviewees, in addition to the narrator. The majority were anti-Chavez. Even Eva Golinger, who had been an adviser to and supporter of Chavez for 11 years, made accusations of a sexual nature against Chavez. Whether the incident she related happened or not we do not know, as only she and Chavez were present, and Chavez died in 2012 so he cannot defend himself.

In the 1998 presidential elections, Chavez got 56% of the vote, despite the favourite to win being a former beauty queen. But, said one commentator, Raul Gallegos, “What Chavez were you getting? Would he be the military authoritarian figure?” And a ‘learned’ university professor, Margarita Lopez Maya, states that Chavez had “no political experience”.

It gets worse. But the BBC has to refrain from telling outright lies. Half-truths will suffice. The oil company PdVSA, although owned by the state, was in effect a state within a state, where many of the oil revenues were siphoned off by the board of directors to benefit the oligarchy, while the mass of the population lived in poverty suffering hunger and malnutrition. Yet, claims Gallegos, “it was well run” but it “surrendered to Chavez”.

Chavez’s “grip on power tightened” when he took control of PdVSA, which had been dominated by the opposition elite. But to opposition supporters this looked like a “communist takeover”. Chavez was apparently even to blame for the unsuccessful coup in April 2002, as demonstrators had supposedly been killed by snipers “on both sides”! This was a blatant lie, as the TV footage at the time showed.

Character assassination

The programme claimed that as Chavez’s presidency unfolded he became “intoxicated with power” or that “power went to his head”. Yet what the programme could not hide was the fact that in his last presidential election in October 2012, “the whole country voted for a man they knew was dying and they still voted him into office”. Isn’t it annoying when facts get in the way of a good story.

What the BBC could and would never understand was that Chavez had a symbiotic link to the popular masses because he expressed their desire to rid Venezuela of poverty, homelessness, hunger and illiteracy.

The programme was therefore in its entirety a character assassination of Chavez. In passing, Jeremy Corbyn was also shown to be guilty by association, as Chavez in turn was shown to be greeting Ahmadinejad of Iran, Gaddafi of Libya, Hussein of Iraq - and of course Corbyn!

Imperialist intervention

Finally, in three areas, the programme mentioned issues that if they had been developed might have painted a more truthful picture of what happened under Chavez. He “bypassed traditional media” and spoke directly to the people in his programme Alo Presidente. No mention from the BBC that most of the media was privately owned, and that much of it had from the outset of Chavez being elected president called for his overthrow. What would happen to the mass media in the UK if it openly called for the overthrow of an elected government?

Secondly, in using oil revenues to fund social programmes (misiones) Chavez decided that “traditional methods of funding social projects were too slow and bureaucratic” so he bypassed the state structures. For socialists, the criticism is that you cannot use a capitalist state to move society in the direction of socialism. In Venezuela as in all other attempts in history to change society, you cannot use the existing state. It is, in Marx’s words, the executive committee of the ruling class.

Lastly, in its conclusion, a commentator, Miguel Tinker Salas, said that “the poor will always be part of the political dialogue in Venezuela”. A lasting legacy of Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution is that millions of ordinary Venezuelans have been awoken to political life. They, along with the 1.6 million people in armed militias, will be the bulwark against any attempt at military intervention by imperialist powers.

So the BBC remains exposed with half-truths (la verdad a media) and misleading quotes (“critics claim” – which critics?; “many blame him (Chavez)” – how many?).

Yet despite the blatant bias, it is still worth watching the programme if you do not know much about Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution – especially considering the Trump coup attempt that is currently underway, accompanied by a whole new barrage of media lies.